The Lost Project of Psychology

As a discipline, psychology considers the nature of the mind: its origins, function and relationship with the world. It has a long history, though its experimental setting was established in the mid-19th century by the German researcher Gustav Fechner. Beginning his research as a physicist, he established the discipline of psychophysics: mathematizing the mind through measure. He was interested in understanding the mind descriptively: what it is and how it does what it does. Notably, he was panpsychist. In his Zend-Avesta: Über die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits (Zend-Avesta: On the Things of Heaven and the Hereafter, 1851), he wrote, “Der Zweck dieser Schrift ist, einen alten Glauben wiederherzustellen: dass die ganze Natur lebendig und göttlich beseelt ist” (“The purpose of this writing is to restore an old belief: that all of nature is living and divinely ensouled,” p. iv). The continuation of this belief throughout early psychology was common, though not necessary.

Experimental psychology was continued and expanded in Fechner’s vein by Wilhelm Wundt, another German professor. Thoroughly based in biology, Wundt was a physiologist and physician who progressed to research the nature of the mind, believing that not everything of the mind and health is reducible to physical tissue. He believed that the mind and visible reality were contiguous and parallel, but did not agree with the panpsychism of Fechner.

Psychology began to be interested in health most stridently with the work of Sigmund Freud. With Freud, psychology ceased to be merely descriptive, but became prescriptive. For the benefit of the analysand, the analyst listened and enabled their liberation from mental traps and fears. Clinical psychology began, leading to a psychology focused not merely on the science of the mind, but the health of the mind too. The 20th century was a very fruitful time for this research. Psychologists in the vein of Abraham Maslow, Jean Piaget and Carl Rogers focused their lives on understanding and strengthening human moral and character development. Erich Fromm, a psychologist who was heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud and studied under the sociologist Max Weber, is a stalwart contributor in this field.

In The Art of Being (1989), a posthumous work collected by his student Rainer Funk, Fromm documents the necessary steps one would have to personally take in order to live a life of the “optimum of self-completion.” In chapter one, Fromm provides a metaphor to describe this concept:

The aim of the life of a rosebush is to be all that is inherent as potentiality in the rosebush: that its leaves are well developed and that its flower is the most perfect rose that can grow out of this seed. The gardener knows, then, in order to reach this aim he must follow certain norms that have been empirically found. The rosebush needs a specific kind of soil, of moisture, of temperature, of sun and shade. It is up to the gardener to provide these things if he wants to have beautiful roses. But even without his help the rosebush tries to provide itself with the optimum of needs. It can do nothing about moisture and soil, but it can do something about sun and temperature by growing “crooked,” in the direction of the sun, provided there is such an opportunity. Why would not the same hold true for the human species?

In the same way, a baby is faced with a variety of qualities and conditions that will enable the actualization of his or her inherent potential. Government and coercion, education and its quality, the freedom promoted in the home and country, the attention that is cultivated to define and accomplish goals, for example. We can easily imagine the normativity of raising a child: you would want them in places that respect them, you would want to lead them to be confident, loving and self-controlled people. Now, easily imagine, the lost project of psychology is the normativity and self-completion of you.

Fromm continues to describe the scientific normativity of human beings as deriving from the health they create. This passage relates one self-destructive behavior, gluttony, to others: “fame, power…[and] control.”

Now, those who insist that all so-called value judgments in reference to human happiness have no theoretical foundation do not raise the same objection with regard to a physiological problem, although logically the case is not different. Assuming a person has a craving for sweets and cakes, becomes fat and endangers his health, they do not say: “If eating constitutes his greatest happiness, he should go on with it and not persuade himself, or let himself be persuaded by others, to renounce this pleasure.” They recognize this craving as something different from normal desires, precisely because it damages the organism. This qualification is not called subjective—or a value judgment or unscientific—simply because everyone knows the connection between overeating and health. But, then, everyone also knows today a great deal about the pathological and damaging character of irrational passions such as the craving for fame, power, possessions, revenge, control, and can indeed qualify these needs as damaging, on an equally theoretical and clinical basis.

In this way, Erich Fromm finds himself in a similar camp as Sam Harris. The idea is that well-functioning is not subjective: that there are in fact norms that are important for the healthy functioning of human beings and we would be more helped by recognizing that self-destructive tendencies are immoral. The normal botanist who cares about his plants would not denutrify particular plants for his twisted enjoyment: he or she would allow each of them to bloom to their fulfillment and bearing of fruit. Fromm expands on his vision of the project of liberation, describing how it is both the removal of external force and constraints, politically speaking, and the overcoming of internal fears and irrational passions. He quickly recognizes that the Soviet Union and communist countries have less external freedom than the citizens in America and the West, but emphasizes that the West has largely forgotten about this internal, emancipatory project.

Any attempt to overcome the possibly fatal crisis of the industrialized part of the world, and perhaps of the human race, must begin with the understanding of the nature of both outer and inner chains; it must be based on the liberation of man in the classic, humanist sense as well as in the modern, political and social sense. The Church still by and large speaks only of inner liberation, and political parties, from liberals to communists, speak only about outer liberation. History has clearly shown that one ideology without the other leaves man dependent and crippled. The only realistic aim is total liberation, a goal that may well be called radical (or revolutionary) humanism.

Psychology, then, is a tool in raising the awareness of the ultimate emancipatory potential of the human being, free from fear, oppression and slavery. Erich Fromm, who viewed himself as fulfilling the tenets of Judaism, was not merely a psychologist, but like the key spiritual and political figures across history, a theorist and practitioner of radical liberation.

Another psychologist from the last century who conducted this work is the Spanish-born Catholic priest Ignacio Martín-Baró. In his work, he emphasizes de-ideologization, critical consciousness (concientización) and critical realism. This approach attempts to root the understanding of groups in their own self-understanding, avoiding social myths and narratives about progress through consumer goods, specialization in technocapital society and the legitimation of conformity. The goal is rooting the good in what is the Good, not easy or mass-produced.

There is still work being done in this field, but it is natural that our society, composed largely of “don’t rock the boat” types and “don’t make people uncomfortable” feelings struggles in standing up for anything such as the Truth or the Good. I invite you to contemplate the potential of hypertrophy of such conformist spiritu-psycho-bodily attitudes and the suffocating impact of that on individual and community wellbeing, like self-competency, esteem and meaning. It is important for someone to stand up for the Good that will last beyond their lifetime and help their children.

To that end, it is difficult, nonetheless, to stand up for anything without faith or absolute certainty behind it. I choose pragmatically. Because of my experience of God, the transforming experience I have had with Jesus Christ and the love that I feel with Him and His people, I stand with Him. I believe Fromm, a lifelong reader of Master Eckhart, and Martín-Baró, a Catholic priest, felt similar devotion to their task, beyond temporary feelings or secular liberation.